They Can't All Be Champions

Two things converged today. First, my friend Judy found out last week that if you do a Google image search on "bacon cupcakes," you get 55,000 hits. Second, the temperature failed to reach her minimum threshhold for us to go to the Art Shanty Projects. That's how we ended up in my kitchen trying to make our own bacon cupcakes on a Sunday afternoon.

They say you learn not from your successes, but from your failures. Today has been an education. Did you know that you cannot make a credible peanut butter frosting from the Joy of Cooking recipe using natural peanut butter? Did you know that there is a razor-thin line between crisp-cooked bacon and burned-to-a-crisp bacon? Did you know that a quarter pound of bacon is nowhere near enough to make any kind of flavor impression on the old Walker Museum Gallery 8's Wellesley fudge cake?

That's OK. We learned all kinds of things for next time. For instance, next time we should cook a full pound of bacon to crumble into the batter. Next time we might try a spice cake with brown butter frosting instead of fudge cake with peanut butter frosting. Next time we might even try replacing a tablespoon or two of the butter with bacon grease.

Next time. Except there's probably not going to be a next time. Upon tasting our handiwork, Judy commented, "It's not the best use of bacon, but if you're going to make cupcakes, you might as well put some in."

Meh. We should have gone to the shanties.